Sony's laptops may match Apple's in terms of usability and design, but Sony always adds a few bells and whistles to make them stand out from the crowd. Performance, unfortunately, seems to come second to design in Sony's world.

We liked

While the lime green colour of our Sony VAIO C Series review model is likely to inspire either slack-jawed awe or seething hatred, there's no denying that Sony has shaken things up in terms of design.

At the very least it makes a change from the black and silver hunks of plastic we've been toting since the early 2000s. It's a wonderful experience in terms of usability, and the bright screen, decent webcam and comfortable keyboard make it feel substantial and solid. For media tasks and general computing it performs very well, too.

We disliked

Given the array of hardware packed into the C Series, we were disappointed with its performance. Although it's capable of moderate gaming, there are better dedicated alternatives for a similar price.

Battery life is the biggest let-down here, and a mere hour at high load is frankly appalling. There are laptops out there that offer 10 times as much, and with the Samsung Chromebook's eight hour battery life, it's become an important part of choosing a laptop.

Verdict

It's unfortunate, but the Sony VAIO C Series let us down in exactly the way we expected: it's a complete triumph of style over substance.

Despite its amazing looks, and fairly beefy hardware, it just didn't perform as well as it should have. This is compounded by the price, which is too high. Medion's Akoya E6221 costs £240 less, but includes a similar level of hardware specifications and performs almost as well.

It's also clear that Sony is targeting consumers who like shiny and sleek Apple products, but has forgotten that the price tag has to be more competitive in order to truly attract this market.